Quotes About Evidence

For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others.

One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.

After the Civil War, America continued to churn out prophets of new, simple, complete, and self-contained systems of healing, two of which, chiropractic and Christian Science, survive today. (Evidence does suggest that spinal manipulation can relieve musculoskeletal conditions, but no evidence supports chiropractic claims that disease is caused by misalignment of vertebrae.)

most important lesson for every man of science, not to be satisfied with loose thinking and half-proofs, not to speculate and theorize but to observe closely and carefully.

Nothing in science is as damning as the inability of an outside experimenter to reproduce results.

As George Loewenstein, an economist at Carnegie Mellon, points out, "There is little evidence beyond fallible introspection supporting the standard assumption of complete volitional control of behavior.

The problem facing a comprehender is analogous to the problem that a detective faces when trying to solve a crime. In both cases there is a set of clues.

The choice to 'do nothing' in response to the mounting evidence is actually a choice to continue and even accelerate the reckless environmental destruction that is creating the catastrophe at hand.

For nothing ought to be posited without a reason given, unless it is self-evident (literally, known through itself) or known by experience or proved by the authority of Sacred Scripture.

No one I know of has ever had this experience-where you had to sit and wait and wait for a DNA test to come back just so you can write the last page of the book.

Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.

Experience is devoid of the cherry-picking that we find in studies.

Science demands objective factual evidence - proof; spiritual experience is subjective and leads to faith.

It must be possible for an empirical system to be refuted by experience.

The process of induction is the process of assuming the simplest law that can be made to harmonize with our experience.

With caution judge of probability. Things deemed unlikely, e'en impossible, experience oft hath proved to be true.

The fall of the Berlin Wall really demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that there was a bad system, and what subsequently happened in the Soviet Union, that that system was a failure.

If Liberia has failed, then, it is no evidence of the failure of the Negro in government. It is merely evidence of the failure of slavery.

For those with faith, no evidence is necessary; for those without it, no evidence will suffice.

Faith is belief without evidence and reason; coincidentally that's also the definition of delusion.

Faith is a response to evidence, not a rejoicing in the absence of evidence.

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.

Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.

You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe